TROOP HEIST

The thudding sound of the roof sheets and the cries of people and animals caught my attention one fine afternoon, when I peeped out of the window and saw the troop. It was spread all over and looking for possible targets to hit for. People here and there shouting and asking their dear ones to be aware of the attack which was going to happen.

And then in a minute the action started first, with signal among the members which obviously we couldn’t understand because of our evolution. Asking each and every one to be ready and hold their respective grounds and do as planned. The target was the general store which was at the ground floor of my apartment. The attack was planned in a sense that some of the soldiers will make the move, with two of them sitting on the roof of the store and two at the side hiding behind the parked vehicle. The shopkeeper as usual displayed the chips packet hanging on the hooks of the roof, bread kept on the counter with trays of egg and his balance. The first among them made a move by leaping for the packet of bun and as soon as the shopkeeper noticed that he started screaming and hushed away the monkey, this opportunity was made use by the one hiding behind the vehicle to take the eggs. And the one on the roof with his flexibly moving body showcased the stunts to fetch the packets of chips. In the meanwhile I heard that there was also a heist at the vegetable store and the things handpicked included tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. The interesting part is all the participants can be seen sitting on the terrace of the locality and feeding on the heist made.  

  

I still remember an incident that happened when I was in school and in the age group of 5-6 years. One fine morning I went up on my terrace as I liked to play atop there and feel the morning breeze, suddenly I saw a monkey and was fear stricken, the reason was the terror in those days regarding the mischief and monkey bites in our area. But to my surprise something happened which I still doesn’t understand why? The monkey leaped over the wall and landed on my shoulder and then to my surprise kept its hands on my eyes and with its legs caught my ears … in a role play of what Gandhiji’s three monkeys resembled. The one with eyes closed, the other with hands on its lips and the third one with hands on the ears. In my situation, two were my eyes and ears and the third one the monkeys mouth with which it started calling its friends.

But to its surprise, my mother noticed that I was nowhere in the house and the terrace door was open. In search of me, she came up and saw the whole scene and made the monkey to run away leaving me in the baffled situation without knowing what exactly did happen there. This was my first face to face encounter.

In the later years, when I used to go to shop with my father, we could see a band of monkeys sitting on the road and terrace spread across an area as if they have conquered the same and wish no one to intrude. But defying all there rules, my father would hold my hands and tell me the hidden truth, “if you don’t harm them, they won’t harm you” and we used to walk past them without any damage. These lines are something I still follow in my life and are the ones my father used to tell me in my childhood days whenever we encountered situations of this sought.

Years passed by and I grew up, shifted places and regions finally settled down at a place. And here I witnessed the heist by the monkeys, it was the troop of monkeys which would amaze me every now and then. The strict order of their hierarchy they would follow when they move over the terrace walls, the novice in the tribe moving on the wires and cables to cross the roads as if moving over the over-bridges doing all the acrobats they would. The leader of the band upfront followed by his wife with the child hanging on her belly, followed by the ladies and the other men as soldiers moving in a line, with some of its scouts scouting the area before the boss arrives.

There play and fun is also worth watching wherein they climb over the neem trees in the parks and try to jump of its tall canopies to land down by holding on to its branches as if they were Tarzan’s trying to cover the whole jungle of a forest(here a tree) by holding on the twigs and twins. The heist here is for survival, and that too can be clearly seen that the ones who get hold of something clearly eat it up and others try to get hold off it resulting in a chaos. The causalities’ in all these is the broken eggs in the trays, broken cables of telephone and internet broadband along with monkey bites on  humans. These monkeys with no place to live in can be seen lying down on the stairs and places which provide them with cold surface in the scorching heat of the sun. But we in fear of the causalities’ try to hush them away beating them with rods and throwing water over them. Leading them to get angry over us humans and biting the ones who pass nearby them knowingly or unknowingly.

But have you imagined what has led to all these monkeys out of the real forest to the concrete jungles. Yes, the activities of men. In search of prosperity man has been converting the forest lands into residential areas, building his own by destroying theirs. It lead them out to the open in search of a place to stay and some food to eat, leading them to attack us in their defense. The picture above was shot by me at Jim Corbett National park during a visit there, a natural habitat for the animals and the carefree look on the face of the creature is clearly visible which is totally different from what we witness in the cities.

 

“ Zindagi ki khashmakash mein sabhi lage hai

Itna toh lehza inn bejubano ke liye rakho

Kitna bhi aage badh jaoge dusro  ko dabakar

Rahoge phir bhi inn hi ke vanshajh sabhi” 

Are Love and Like Alike?

Love, a most common but the rarest of topic that we as humans clearly understand and make a mistake about. When I say a mistake, it doesn’t mean Love is a mistake but that we are mistaken. How? Let’s see

I remember once in my junior school days there was some story writing competition and the topic was ”Love”, I to my level of understanding then wrote about two pages on it. But the funny thing was, it was a story competition but I wrote an essay without a story in it. My teacher after the evaluation called me and told me that what you wrote was good but the story was missing. So, it can be concluded here that I knew about love somehow then but no stories about it.

But what is “love” and I would introduce a similar term here “like” and so what is the difference or are both same, this needs to be understood. In our intermediate school level and college life, we encounter these both the like and love factor. Once someone asked Buddha, what is the difference between “I like you” and “I love you”? He being Buddha answered it beautifully saying, when you like a flower, you just pluck it. But when you love a flower, you water it daily. Something clicked!!

I had an experience and most of us usually might have experienced the same, when someone has a crush on us or we have on someone. The person comes to us and says I like you and we mean it as I love you. But there is a difference, isn’t it. So according to me love and like is

L	Longing		L	Looking
O	Over		I	Interestingly  and
V	Valued		K	Keenly
E	Experiences		E	Evaluating

And the differences are

Love	Like
Natural process	Influential Process
Remains the same	Changes as the days past
Life long	Momentary
Slow process	Instantaneous or Faster Process
Unconditional	Conditional

·         Longing vs. Looking

“Longing” here means wishing to have it at any cost and feeling restless and “looking” means just noticing something that gets you interested.

·         Over vs. Interestingly

“Over” as in the chances of possessing the same by any means and “interestingly” means to find that attracts your interest or something that is different from others.

·         Valued vs. Keenly

“Valued” because it is something you value above everything and “Keenly” to make it match with your thoughts or ideas.

·         Experiences vs. Evaluating

“Experiences” are the moments which bring a sense of joy, peace and excitement in our minds and ”Evaluating” to make the checklist apt selections and  finding the odds.

To like somebody or something is based on the quality in that person or thing which is different from others or because it is having something similar to us – our behaviour, our qualities, our thoughts, etc. But this converts into love, when we are willing to do anything for that thing or person and not able to get that, causes a sensation of missing something.

I had friends who liked someone and expressed their feelings to those selected people but due to that person not expressing the same thing as expected they went into a feeling of negation, escapism, and does not feel the courage to face these people again. As Buddha said, I would like to quote they were trying to pluck that flower and hence, they felt bad. If they had really loved them, they would have loved the person or thing even though they were not loved back, they might have felt different. Eventually we all know, what belongs to us will come to us and which doesn’t will get away from us even though we have it.

And the most important of all is that, it is easy to love someone but to make them love you back is difficult. So I would say, continue to love the people you do as much you can but don’t hurt yourself neither them when you face with rejection. Instead be as you are and continue to love them, if they feel the same they will return else just go with the flow as God has better plans for you. Keep loving and liking……

“Mohabbat na hi sahi pasand hi kar lete hai

Izhar toh kar hi chuke hai,  abb nibah bhi lete hai”

Do share your thoughts in comments below…..

Friendship

FRIENDSHIP

Friendship a word that brings smile to everyone who hears about it. Friends are like an important part of our lives, someone we could not avoid. They may be small or large in number but the time spent with them is something that cannot be forgotten, whether it be the time in the classroom during the lectures or in the school grounds, canteens, in the lobby or outside the classrooms during the punishments, etc.

But with every phase of life, the type of people we encounter in our lives is varied. Each and everyone has a variety of friends – some with whom we would like to go for parties, others with whom we would like to gossip, some to spend your time with while playing and roaming around or in short some for each and every circumstance of our lives. But most of us always have some or the other person whom we have encountered in our lives who from that instance is a part of our lives through our every thick and thin.

To have a friend to share your thoughts, clear doubts, tell lies to, make fun of, roam around and the one with whom you can be open to is truly a blessing.

v Sources of Friendship:

But are all of your friends the same and behave the same, I would classify the friends we have into following types:

• 1.       Childhood Friends: They are mostly know in common Indian tongues as the “chuddy-buddies”. These may be the ones whom we have encountered in our neighbourhood or during the times we used to play after the school and may be the ones we went to school with. These are the ones with whom we spent the most memorable days in our lives but with time and the tensions in life, we forget these.
• 2.       Schoolmates: These are the ones with whom we spent our childhoods most of the productive times with. By productive I mean learning theories in school and applying them in the classroom, having fun by sitting at the backbenches, playing with the foil in our lunchboxes during the lunch breaks and other short breaks, making fun of other classmates and playing with each other using the stationery which were meant for education. These were the people who taught us how to be in a team, how to be leaders, how to support and be supported, etc. However, old do we become it does not matter, these memories and meeting them after years brings a feeling of refreshment and smile to us irrespective of the troubles we are facing in our lives.
• 3.       College-mates: A phase of life which prepares us for the further battles of life. But it is a world different from the others we have seen till then. From different backgrounds and parts of the country and may be the world, we get a chance to come together and influence each other’s lives.  But this is a stage which brings a sense of seriousness to our lives whether it be in our academics, politics, love or relationship. But the scenario is being batch-mates or classmates or hostel-mates makes us learn about different phases of our lives and makes us to be self-reliant, confident, self-introspect, explore new world and the ways of dealing it. And the most important aspect is the love life or the relationship we encounter during this period that excites most of us to the colleges.
• 4.       Office mates: These are the ones whom we encounter in our workplaces, these may include the same people from the above categories but mostly the scenario is not the same. As stated above depending upon the kind of work and the location, this phase of life also bring people to our lives who help us in our official works may be in the process or to become competitive and develop our skills to enhance our skills. But there are frequent chances that you get people who for their own benefits make use of your talents or utilise your skills to grow in their life and deceitfully ditch you in times of need.
• 5.       Social Media: The friendship through different social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc and applications like Tinder, etc. are also trending these days. Random people making request to be friends and people getting in touch with random people is a common phenomenon seen on these sites.

v    Qualities in a Friend:

A famous proverb says “A friend in need is a friend indeed” but this need is the one which usually leads to friendship in today’s world. Most of the people nowadays are in stress of their work or problems in their lives and need someone to share their feelings to or problems with. But they don’t get to share someone with them their problems and if they do get someone and trust that person to share their problems, the other person takes advantage of these problems against the person. This makes the person to lose faith in friendship and thus, people shut themselves off and don’t further trust anyone else.

F	Faithful
R	Reliable
I	Intelligent
E	Encouraging
N	Naughty and
D	Delightful

Some qualities which everyone of us looks in our friends may be

Ø  F-Faithful: By faithful I mean here someone who is loyal to us.-Loyalty

Ø  R-Reliable: By reliable, someone who can be relied upon or trusted, who won’t leave you in the midst of troubles, may be looked upon for help-Secret Holder

Ø  I-Intelligent: By intelligent, it is not meant that the person should be a scholar or so. It just means that must be able to use their minds. Someone who could be approached to solve problems-Problem Solver

Ø  E-Encouraging: By encouraging, it means a person who could encourage us to build up the courage to face situations and may come with us to face that with us.- Motivator

Ø  N-Naughty: If there is no fun with friends then what is the use of it, right. Every friend brings out the quality in each one of us which breaks the rules set by the society in different phases of our life.-Fun Loving

Ø  D-Delightful: A friend must be the one being with whom makes us forget time or we become unaware of the time. There is lot to talk about and discuss when we are with our friends and that is what brings the delight in us.-Memorable

v  Types of Friendship:

1.       Name-Sake Friends: These are the ones who are friends for the sake of name. They must be present in our friend list and contact list of phones but we hesitate to contact them or even does not consider them to be contacted at times. E.g. All the students in a classroom

2.       Close Friends: These are the friends within our friend list whom we contact frequently and as the name suggests the Social Media also provides us with this option. Consider the Instagram option of sharing our stories with selected few or Facebook’s option of Share with, etc. These are closer than the above mentioned class and are usually referred to in our conversations.

3.       Besties: Now this is a few special people who are the ones we connect to on a daily basis and the ones who know us inside out. These may be the ones who knows us inside out and remains in contact even for a longer time in our lives.

4.       Boyfriends & Girlfriends: Now this comes in couple type of friendship and they remain upto themselves. I am not aware what they talk about day in and day out, may be you people are better aware of it.

5.       Common Helping Friend: It is basically a person who is referred to by everyone you know or may not in case of need and this person is remembered by everyone at times of need of any help or to get them out of any problem. It is a kind of friendship most common and used basically to get things done.

6.       Gang or Band: This is basically a group of friends which is basically formed in the school days or in college days. These people usually share common interest or intellect and are usually found together. This is formed as part of common interest like sports, music, specialisation, etc.

7.       Parental Friendship: This is an exclusive type of friendship in which our parents are considered as friends. People share everything with their parents either father or mother or may be both.

It also can include friendship among family cousins or so, if any.

All of us have plenty of friends in our friends list on different Social Media Platforms, in which category each falls in now I suppose every one of us can identify. You can even add to the above categories other than these and can add your comments and recommendations as well. I hope this blog might have at least brought back the old memories of your life in which true and fun-filled friends where the part of our lives. So, be a friend whom every other person can trust and remember for a longer time..

Welcome readers!!

Hi,all

This is a blog which I am writing with a thought of expressing the different tales which everyone of us might have encountered or will be encountering in our lives. It is just an attempt to share my point of view or thoughts on the topics.

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